


Hellfire Jam

by drladybird



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alien Biology, Bullying, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Ice Cream, Normandy-SR1, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Slice of Life, ice cream: humanity's greatest contribution, very dull paperwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:41:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24715507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drladybird/pseuds/drladybird
Summary: Silas Crosby isn't impressed with this T'Soni kid, inviting herself onto an Alliance ship and making eyes at the captain. He means to take her down a peg or two, and he has a bottle of extra-powerful hot sauce.Turns out hot sauce only tastes hot to humans.
Relationships: Liara T'Soni & Ashley Williams, Male Shepard/Liara T'Soni
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

Private Crosby took the dented gauntlet off the armoury bench, tried to waggle the worst mangled finger, and swore.

"You're qualified to fix that," Ash told him. "I'm not. You fix it, Crosby, I'll get the chunks of batarian off these hardsuits."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, failing to hide his apathy.

Crosby was a dick, but he was good in a fight, great at lifting heavy objects, and she wasn't paid to like him. She went back to scrubbing soot off Draven's breastplate - it was scorched, but it looked structurally sound.

"Why was T'Soni wearing human armour anyway?" he muttered.

"Cause it fits, from the neck down?" Ash pointed out. "Cheaper to buy a tentacle helmet than a whole new suit, when we can requisition standard-size biotic armour any time we need it?"

Ideally they'd be keeping their kid genius  _ out _ of combat, but the pirates had supposedly been sitting on a Prothean relic that "gave them strength," so T'Soni had volunteered to help out. Damn impressive biotic show! Getting her hand broken by a guy sneaking up and whacking her with a jammed rifle,  _ less _ impressive, but she'd taken some painkillers, only cried a little bit, and still been able to examine the "relic". 

Which turned out to be a Prothean-art-inspired sculpture. Mass-produced on Thessia to pretty up someone's loungeroom, a few centuries before they invented space flight.

It was pretty, but too common for museums to want. The recs guy was trying to sell it to antique collectors. 

Crosby grunted. "Why do we even  _ have  _ T'Soni?"

"She's the best Prothean expert we're likely to get, and she thought she'd be safer with us?" Ash shrugged. "Been keeping an eye on her given the whole mom thing, but... intelligence says she really hasn't talked to the old bastard since their last fight, and that was twenty years back."

"Don't  _ like  _ the way she looks at the Commander," he muttered. "That's not right. She got tentacles down below too, or what?"

"Crosby, I've seen  _ you  _ eye up the Commander's package in the showers. You want her to look him in the eye when you can't?"

Ash was not thrilled with the way Liara smiled at Shepard, or his tendency to  _ flirt back,  _ but it was probably more jealousy than anything else. Wasn't the first time Ash had had a dumb crush on her CO, wouldn't be the last, taking it anywhere was always an awful idea. Liara was sweet and absolutely brilliant and could be a lot of fun when she stopped hiding in corners, and rationally Ash could absolutely see why Shepard was into that, and irrationally... well, she'd stop being sad about it sooner or later.

More fish in the sea. Fish who aren't your CO, even.

"Not the same," Crosby muttered.

"What, we playing the unnatural acts card?  _ You're  _ playing the unnatural card, Crosby?"

He frowned. "How do we know she's not some sort of  _ thing _ that just messes with your head to  _ look  _ like a hot girl?"

"Cause she fits into human armour?" Draven's breastplate needed a fresh coat of sealant. "Cause we killed Dalia Dantius and she looked just the same dead? Didn't have any more tentacles than when she was alive? You planning to talk, Crosby, or use your fancy training to fix that glove?"


	2. Chapter 2

Liara stared at her screen and shook her head. The Khalek salarian clan had performed a comprehensive review of planetary extinction events, but they'd written their papers in the densest and least legible prose she'd seen that year.

_ And  _ her left hand was quite painful. Human bone knitters worked, but the painkilling and anti-inflammatory functions didn't. She'd been ordered to wear a sling for a few days, to help with bruising. Earth "aspirin" was surprisingly effective, but not really strong enough, and she wasn't about to take anything that might cloud her mind...

Although her mind felt quite clouded in any case.  _ What  _ was Khalek Lekkai talking about now?

She considered the rows of her favourite energy drinks lined up on the shelves, glowing magenta and promising delicious artificial-fruit flavour, and decided she'd already had enough stims for one day.

She did not appreciate tiny, tiny starships, with tiny, tiny gyms soaked in pungent alien sweat, and nowhere at all to go for a walk. Maybe if she performed enough squats and sit-ups in her office, the Khaleks would become intelligible?

...no, that made her hand significantly more painful.

She really was tired of this room. Maybe there was vanilla ice cream left in the mess hall freezer?

Little blue tubs of vanilla ice cream, soft and cool and sweet. Her ancestors were quite skilled with fruit sorbets, but somehow they'd never invented ice cream. This seemed like a great oversight on their part.

Was she being oversensitive, or was Khalek Lekkai implying that an interest in non-procreative sex was a sign of "partial civilisation"? The grammar made it difficult to tell.

Human phalluses were rather comical to look at, but... appealing in a silly way. Were you supposed to flip the little flappy bit back and forth to help them inflate? And while dirty humans smelled utterly appalling, clean ones smelled strong but very pleasant indeed. Shepard was more rectangle-shaped than she was normally attracted to, but he had such lovely muscle definition... that long neat furrow down his spine, imagine stroking it with her fingers...

She would have an easier time remaining civilised if Lekkai was a remotely competent writer!

...ice cream. She stood up, strode through medbay, and headed for the mess.

Silas Crosby, the very large, somewhat intimidating Marine, was eating ice cream in the mess. He glared at her.

"Good evening, Private Crosby," she said. He kept glaring.

Oh well. Not her problem. She tugged the freezer open and was pleased to discover rows upon rows of little blue cardboard tubs.

"You don't have better on your planet?" Crosby asked.

She grabbed a tub. "We don't have  _ any  _ ice cream on... er, my culture, I can hardly speak for the entirety of Thessia. Only occasional sweetened whipped cream." Now remember, Liara, you're not supposed to lick it out of the tub. That breaks several minor taboos. Use a spoon. "I... would assume this is not the best possible ice cream, given its status as military rations? I would love to try genuinely good ice cream someday, if this is the mediocre version?"

He went back to glaring at her. Still not her problem.

She found a spoon one-handed, settled herself at the table, and took a spoonful. Mmm.

Crosby's gaze slid down to her breasts, and stayed there. For Athame's sake, couldn't she even look happy on this ship without people going into rut?

His eyes widened suddenly. "Actually. You know what's  _ really  _ good on ice cream?"

"No?" More ice cream?

"I brought some from home - you should try it!" He leapt to his feet and snatched a jar of red preserves out of the cupboard. "You have to try this!" He grabbed a tablespoon and scooped a heaped spoon of red viscous liquid from the jar. "You'll love it!"

Her spoken English was... limited, but she'd taught herself a decent amount of the written language. "Hot... chilly... in-fer-no... burn?"

"Yeah, it's like... warm spices, it's called that to say you should put it on cold things..." He waved the spoon at her. "C'mon, you'll love it!"

She took the spoon from him and took an experimental lick.

It was some sort of sour jam - sweet and fruity, with shreds of fruit skin and crushed seeds. Slightly odd, but pleasant. She took a bigger lick.

"That really is good," she told him, and dumped the rest of the spoon into her mini-tub of ice cream. "Is it a regional delicacy?"

His eyes had gone wide.

"Are you all right?" she asked him.

"You just." He swallowed. "Ate it. What the hell do they eat where you're from?"

"Silas Crosby.  _ What is going on here?"  _ She trusted him not to seriously poison her, but if he'd given her diarrhea or similar...

"You... man. Even Yao can't just do that without blinking!"

" _ Crosby. Explain." _

He leapt to his feet and started to back away. "Stop looking at me like that, it was just a harmless prank!"

"If I get diarrhea, Crosby, do you know what I'll -"

"It's not toxic! It's just hot! It's not toxic, I swear!" He had his hands up, like he expected her to hit him.

She  _ had  _ started glowing slightly. She made an effort to stop.

She met his round dark eyes. "Crosby. Explain, from the beginning, why feeding me jam is a prank. In detail."

He gulped. "It tasted like  _ jam  _ to you? _ " _

_ " _ Excellent jam. What did you expect it to taste like?" Really? Was this high school? Did he plan to insult her parentage next?

"Like blazing inferno hellfire!" he yelped. "It's hot, right, it's meant to hurt your mouth, you put little bits of it on food to make the food hot... don't you know what chilli is?"

The concept sounded familiar, although she'd never been a fan of hot spices. She dipped her finger in the sauce-covered ice cream and licked it.

"Crosby," she pointed out, "this is jam."

He stared at the opened jar of fruit preserve. If he started implying she had demonic tendencies, she was going to... do something dramatic?

He stuck his finger in the preserve, licked it, winced, and grabbed a huge spoonful of ice cream. "It's not jam!" He stuffed more ice cream in his mouth in a hurry.

She glared at him. "Hold still until I've decided how angry I am. Let me extranet-search what's going on."

_ Chilli: A fruit commonly used by humans as a hot spice. The active ingredient, capsaicin, stimulates heat receptors in Earth mammals. Unfortunately it relies on a specific biological quirk of Earth mammals. Capsaicin is flavourless to all other known sapient species, including mammalian species such as batarians and quarians, and it is mildly toxic to turians. Non-humans wishing to try Earth cooking are advised to substitute khaska powder, yae, or large amounts of daharu. _

She looked back at Crosby. "The heat effect  _ doesn't work on aliens,  _ Crosby. This is jam."

She took a spoonful of her jam-flavoured ice cream. It was delicious.

"Er." He'd gone from light brown to distinctly pink. "Well. I suppose it doesn't work on birds... like, you can use it to keep squirrels out of your birdfeeders... Um."

"Do I get an apology for your failed attempt to burn my mouth, Crosby?" She kept eating.

"It would have been funny," he muttered.

"Crosby, I can tolerate pain when necessary -" she twitched her strapped-up hand at him, "but I am not a fan of unnecessary pain. You claim to be a grown man who can be trusted with firearms. Apologise for your utterly childish behaviour."

"'m sorry," he mumbled. "Wasn't trying to... er..."

"And tell me where to order hellfire jam online. It's the best jam I've eaten in years."


End file.
